Page:The library a magazine of bibliography and library literature, Volume 6.djvu/251

Aberdeen: Its Literature, Bookmaking, and Circulating. 239 very army which some think a waste substance (and the utilisa- tion of waste substances is the glory of the present age} in its inactive state measures base lines, and lays down trigonometrical surveys ; and when active conquers India, annexes Burmah, occupies Egypt, penetrates Abyssinian wilds and helps in their civilisa- tion. To us adults, our army is the teacher of geography par excellence. No sooner is it in campaign than a battalion of news- paper correspondents tell to those who have to stay at home, all about the country invaded. Obscure, sleepy villages like that of Waterloo might have for ever remained so, but for our army operations, and so also might Tel-el- Kebir. Suddenly they are brought into prominence, figure in our maps adorned with two crossed swords as the site of a battle, become pilgrim- age places to Britons, and thus a source of wealth to the countries in which they are placed ; it is a wonder that both places, along with the whole of Switzerland have not been carried over to the Chicago Exhibition. SOj also, the marriages and inter-marriages of the members of our Royal Family teach us genealogy, heraldry, and con- tinental politics. The acquisition and accumulation of wealth by an ever insatiable commerce, is continually extending our knowledge, and so also is the spending of that wealth by the ever increasing number of tourists, globe trotters, sportsmen, and adventurers. When Pope enunciated his famous saying that " the proper study of man was man," the student's opportunities were few and far between as compared with the present, when everybody travels and knows every other body, when English students frequent continental universities, when Indian students take their degrees in Aberdeen, when Paris has been discovered to be the Yankee heaven, and when the highest study, aim, and ambition of all American lady millionaires is to marry an English nobleman, and in the matter of wealth to supplement his de- ficiencies. Their study is Noblemen. To a great many Englishmen the city in which you are at present is a veritable discovery of this century ; to bookish and learned Englishmen it is at best only a re-discovery. For, more than two centuries ago it was better known to many Englishmen than it was at the commencement of this century. Its reputation was an ancient one. According to John Major in his " De Gestis Scotorum," it was the original home of the